Proud to be a Sikkimese: Sikkim Travel, Culture & Local Heritage

I have carved a small dream inside me to visit the Royal Palace at Gangtok ever since I enjoyed learning about my Sikkim. I had always romanticized how the Palace looked from the inside and how royal families did their day-to-day activities inside it.  My fantasy got a wing when surfing down the articles I found a very beautiful article written in a Time magazine some 40 years back when Hope Cook was the Gyalmo of the Kingdom of Sikkim. The rich brown-haired American Queen of Sikkim brought with her the Western world's attention towards the land of Sikkim, which was more of a favorite hub for some British naturists till then.  Hope Cook married Prince Palden Thondup Namgyal in a highly structured marriage ceremony at the Royal monastery on 20 March 1963, which was seen as the tying of the knot of the two worlds.  The grand marriage was also featured in National Geographic Magazine. Five years in her marriage and at 28, Hope Cook had two children Prince Palden at 4, and...

This boot was presented to Milwaukee Public Museum, USA by Hope Cook, the Queen of Sikkim in 1966. The display to its right say : REAL LIFE FAIRY TALE "In 1959, Hope Cooke, an American student, met Palden Thondup Namgyal, the Prince of Sikkim, at a hotel in India. They fell in love and in 1963 their fairy tale wedding enraptured the American public. The Prince was named Chogyal, or King, later that year, making Cooke the Gyalmo, or Queen of Sikkim, the first American Queen of a foreign land. In 1966, Her Highness donated the young men's leather boots from Sikkim to the Museum so there could be something from her adopted country on display."

I was just surfing an eBay auction website, and there I came across some material related to Hope Cook, the former queen of Sikkim on sale. There is an autographed photograph of former queen Hope Cook, her letter and an envelope in which it was sent to the USA. The three materials cost you 300 dollars. The heading of the items says: HOPE COOKE NAMGYAL AUTOGRAPH, Queen consort of SIKKIM ONE-OF-A-KIND PIECE, VERY RARE, THIS COUNTRY IS GONE! Just read the last line that says...."This country is gone". Sikkim is no longer an independent country now so it is more often referred as a dead country. The further description says: PHOTOGRAPH: 4-1/2" X 6" MEASUREMENTS, BLACK AND WHITE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION AND SIGNED IN BLUE INK PEN, "HOPE NAMGYAL" LETTERHEAD: 8-1/4" X 6" THE PALACE, GANGTOK, SIKKIM, DATED 15TH SEPTEMBER 1969 AND SIGNED SINCERELY HOPE NAMGYAL, "GYALMO OF SIKKIM ENVELOPE: 8-1/4" X 6-3/8" WITH 13 STAMPS FROM INDIA...

Extracted from Pakistan Defence India’s “Chief Executive” in Gangtok wrote: “Sikkim’s merger was necessary for Indian national interest. And we worked to that end. Maybe if the Chogyal had been smarter and played his cards better, it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.” It is also said that the real battle was not between the Chogyal and Kazi Lendup Dorji but between their wives. On one side was Queen Hope Cook, the American wife of the Chogyal and on the other was the Belgian wife of the Kazi, Elisa-Maria Standford. “This was a proxy war between the American and the Belgian,” says former chief minister BB Gurung. But there was a third woman involved: Indira Gandhi in New Delhi. Chogyal Palden met the 24-year-old New Yorker Hope Cook in Darjeeling in 1963 and married her. For Cook, this was a dream come true: to become the queen of an independent kingdom in Shangrila. She started taking the message of Sikkimese independence to the youth, and the allegations started flying thic...

(Courtesy: Sudheer Sharma ) On the northern corner of West Bengal state of India , there is a hill station-- Kalimpong, which once hosted celebrities from all over the world. The hill town, where most of the settlers are of Nepali origin, no longer retains its old charm. But until a few weeks ago the last prime minister of a country—that has lost its independence—used to live here. Kazi Lhendup Dorji, who died on 28 July this year at the ripe old age of 103, had played a pivotal role in the merger of Sikkim into India . Dorji is seen as a ‘traitor’ in the contemporary history. He lived, and died, with the same ignominy. “Everybody accuses me of selling the country. Even if it is true, should I alone be blamed?” he asked me, when I met him in Kalimpong in November 1996. But the allegation of ‘betrayal’ towards one’s own motherland was so powerful that Dorji could no more lead an active political life. He spent his solitary life at the ‘C...